Part I It’s a rare, inspiring moment when, after all of your hard work, you finally get to see, with your own eyes, a beautiful thing someone has made as a result of something you’ve written. Today, I want to share a special blog story with you about a mom who dared to challenge her teenage daughter to start a site of her own and the progress they’ve made so far.
I recently had the honor of reviewing an extremely amazing site called TeensGotCents.com – created by Eva and Charlotte (teen and mom) who structured their site based on the advice given in 10 Week Gameplan for a Top 100k Blog.
Not only does the blog have a crisp, clean and eye-catching design, it has some of the most engaging and well-written content – and by a teen!
I couldn’t stop clicking around the site – I was immediately smitten by Eva’s beautiful smiling face and her honest, transparent, and at times, humorous writing style.
I literally had to make myself stop reading so that I would have time to write this! Just stop by the site and if you care anything about finances, you’ll see why I had a difficult time leaving.
I want to share this mother-daughter team’s story with you. I also want to give you some take-aways and point out practical things they are doing right that you can also apply to your blog – so this will be a two-part post that you won’t want to miss!
First, let’s check out Charlotte’s story to get an idea of significance of this blog and the role 10 Week Gameplan played in their blogging strategy.
Blog Planning and Strategy Phase
Here’s what Charlotte wrote:
In August of 2012 I started planning. My daughter was going to be turning seventeen years old in the spring of 2013 and that meant her life was going to change. I should have known that my life was going to change as well.
When my kids hit sixteen or seventeen, I assign them a long term project. No, they don’t have a choice, and yes, I try to give them as much latitude as possible within the assigned project. After a few months of research and careful pondering I decided that Eva’s project would be a website.
It would cultivate the skills in her life that I wanted for her to develop. Improved communication skills, being able to talk comfortably on the phone, scheduling and conducting interviews, writing posts, learning the technical behind the scenes details of running a site, time management and organizational skills.
My fabulous idea was for her to start a rock climbing website. She is a competitive indoor rock climber and there aren’t that many climbing websites out there for indoor climbers.
I was thrilled.
She was not.
She already spends 10+ hours a week in the gym. She didn’t want to spend any more hours of her week thinking about rock climbing. So we spent the next month having this conversation:
Me: A rock climbing website would be so cool.
Eva: No Mom.
Me: Fine. The launch for your website is January 1, 2013. What are you going to write about?
Eva: I have no idea…
And so it went. Until one day Eva had an idea.
Earlier in 2012 we had listened to the audio version of Dave Ramsey’s The Total Money Makeover on our almost daily trips to the gym. Eva was surprisingly interested in the book and really enjoyed Dave’s straightforward and humorous way of explaining how someone should handle their finances.
She was hooked. She mentioned that she might be interested in blogging about personal finance so that teens could avoid so many of the problems that people face because of poor financial decisions. When she searched the internet for information for teens on personal finance she couldn’t find much information out there – and absolutely nothing by a teen for other teens. The decision was made right then. She was crystal clear and totally committed to having a website devoted to personal finance for teenagers.
And then I realized that we had absolutely no clue how to start a website, how to run a website, or anything at all about any website. Period. An acquaintance suggested that I buy a book called the 10 Week Gameplan for a Top 100k Blog by Kiesha Easley. I had done a little reading on the web about blogs by that time and I remember being quite proud that I even knew what a ‘100k Blog’ meant!
I made the purchase quickly, printed it that day and read it that evening (highlighter in hand) before bed. And then I experienced deep regret for ever having told my daughter that her project was going to be a website.
I realized that there was SO much more to it than I could ever have imagined. Although I had no hopes whatsoever that the blog would ever make any actual money, I did want my daughter to strive for excellence in all of her endeavors. This meant that we would approach the website as if it were a business – which meant that I was going to have to pull myself together and commit to the project as well. And so our partnership was born.
We work together on the website almost every day. Eva is responsible for contacting individuals to ask them for an interview and for conducting the interviews themselves. She approaches businesses about giveaways on TeensGotCents. She is also in charge of all of the promotion that is done for the site. She posts everything on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and a few other places. She follows up all of our interactions with others with a handwritten thank you note. I take care of everything behind the scenes.
Almost all of the editing has fallen to me. Eva and I work together on accomplishing the tasks that are outlined in the book in order to see the improvements that we hope to see. We work together to brainstorm ideas about posts for the blog and to keep our editorial calendar filled at least one month in advance.
I do want to be clear on one point. This is Eva’s website. If we disagree on something, she makes the final decision. All of this is worthless to me if I am simply the one with a website. Everything that we do is driven by the vision that Eva has for the site. Learning to respect her in this regard has led to greater mutual respect in our relationship. She gives my opinion a lot of weight and I know that she appreciates me.
TeensGotCents is what it is because of 10 Week Gameplan. The first section alone – about building a great blogging team – is worth the price of the book. We have successfully built a team around our partnership because of Kiesha’s recommendations.
We work with two incredible young adults who contribute regularly to the site, Sarah Fechtel (Shopping with Sarah) and Michael Horton (The Best Buy with Mike). Both Sarah and Mike are personal friends and have added so much to the website with their writing and ideas.
Eva has also successfully reached out to a number of other personal finance bloggers and has been welcomed into that community with open arms. We have not had to seek out any guest posting opportunities because other bloggers have invited her to guest post on their sites!
The rest of the book was easy to understand even for someone who knew nothing about starting a website. I really appreciate the way that Kiesha walks you through daily tasks in a step by step manner that leaves no doubt about what you need to do. The weekly recap was also particularly helpful to me.
The truth is that we have only accomplished about a third of the recommendations that are given in 10 Week Gameplan. Everything else is still on our long term to do list. I knew when we started that we could not do everything in 10 weeks – maybe not even in the first year. But I also knew that we could adapt the principles and work on it at a pace that was doable for a high school student and her mom. I refer back to the book often as we seek to add in additional efforts to spread the word about TeensGotCents.
On January 1, 2013 we started with an Alexa ranking that hovered right around the 21 million mark. Our goal was to crack 500,000 in the first six months and under 100,000 within the first year. Thanks to Kiesha, I am happy to report that we are currently right around 340,000 after six months. We have been thrilled with our progress.
Our plan is to continue to produce helpful and relevant content for teenagers and their parents. At some point in the future we plan to monetize the site in order to provide income for Eva as she approaches her college years.
Regardless of the standard measures of website success, Eva and I are having an absolute blast working on the site together. We have seen an incredible improvement in Eva’s communication skills particularly as she has had the opportunity to interview distinguished business people in our community and other teens who are committed to manage their money well.
She has grown in her ability to converse with adults and then follow through with all of the steps necessary to secure, schedule, conduct and then post an interview. She is improving as a writer and is even starting to learn more about issues such as PageRank and SEO and all of that stuff.
Eva’s confidence continues to grow even in the midst of a fairly large learning curve. The best part? Our relationship has become that much closer as we work toward the same goal for TeensGotCents. I wouldn’t trade this experience for the world.
Obviously, the site is off to a great start after just seven months. I just checked and their Alexa Rank is now around 328,000! They’ve built a solid foundation of content that just pulls readers in. There’s so much helpful information and knowledge on the site that it’s bound to keep growing.
So what strategies that they’ve mentioned above could you apply to your blog? Drop by tomorrow for more practical tips that you can use to build a solid centsible blog like this one (I couldn’t resist!). I’m also going to provide some strategies and monetization ideas for Eva and Charlotte that they actually can begin applying right now. So stay tuned for more!
Did you purchase my book and have a success story to share? Contact me for an opportunity to have your story presented here, too!
The post What Happens When You Blog with a Gameplan appeared first on Weblogbetter - Blog Tips.
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